The Unique Marketing Strategy of a Maid!

A lady of a household had been in quite a lot of distress, because since a long time she had had to manage two houses in two different places. She was not in a position to stay more than a month in one place and on the top of it she had to attend to various professional activities in places other than the places where she had her houses. Therefore, Namrata’s eternal problem was to find a maid whenever she happened to be in one particular place, and that was well-nigh impossible because maids always prefer jobs with a regular monthly salary and they shy away from gigs without commitment. Besides, her husband made it very clear that he couldn’t afford to have two maids on monthly salaries doing nothing in their absence. At times she was lucky to find someone willing to work on a daily wage as long as she was needed; but after they left the place those maids were no longer available when they came back. One of her houses was in the big city that she always preferred to stay in, and the other was in a small town, hundreds of miles away, where she had to come sometime due to her husband’s engagements.

So, when she came back to her house in the big city after a long break the problem of finding a daily-wage maid was becoming very acute. One day, while doing her marketing in the supermarket area of the campus she spotted a girl moving around here and there. The girl was short with a round plump smiling face and looked very homely in a modest dress of salwar kurta, and more importantly, she was only around 25 years of age—an age Namrata always preferred for her maids, instead of the condescending middle-aged ones. Namrata, acting on impulses and some intuition, called her close and asked her if she worked as a maid. Indeed, she worked as a maid and was willing to find new jobs. Namrata found her very polite and soft spoken. She explained the situation to her and asked if she was willing to work on a daily wage on whatever days she wanted her to come to her house. The young girl agreed and it was done.

As the young maid began working in her well-kept, neat and clean and compact household Namrata was very impressed with her honesty, and she was full of praise for her. She told her husband that finally God has handed her a solution. The girl was not at all greedy like all others and she never objected to the wage given by Namrata. She punctually came at the time fixed and more than that she used to check if Namrata wanted any change by coming early morning every day, just to confirm.

Namrata was the happiest soul on earth till the first day of the next month arrived.

On that day the young maid came around noontime and informed Namrata that she would not be able to do the work as she had landed several new monthly jobs and there was just no free time available for her. The sudden turn of events piqued Namrata to a great measure. Several points came to her mind: that her immediate neighbor engaged the maid even though they always lived there; that she’d already given her quite a few things of the house that she thought would be useful for the young girl who lived with her elder sister in a shanty nearby; and that the maid had been talking much smarter in the last couple of days. Surmising the points, she now found her ungrateful and cunning. There was a long debate between the two with no solution coming up. Finally, Namrata saw her off asking her to come in the afternoon.

The young maid never came back. Namrata then began pouring her ire to her husband. The husband took in the picture perfectly and told her the following:

The young girl was actually looking for jobs, maybe desperately—on monthly basis only for sustenance. For that she’d started moving around in the campus to get noticed by someone (of course, the husband concedes, she may have had at least one job in the campus or in the nearby buildings). She wore a very modest humble look just to impress possible homemakers. She was very particular about not being greedy about money as she expected those attributes of hers circulate around the campus through mouth-to-mouth publicity. She came every morning to Namrata’s house to check (her husband found her talking on her mobile in the passage, moving around) which was a clear move to enhance her visibility like marketers do with their products—ranging from commodities to movies and to even books. Her marketing strategy worked fine as she succeeded in getting quite a few monthly engagements.

“You see, Namrata! What she’s done is not at all wrong or illegal except for the fact that it’s thrown your problem squarely back at you and for that the girl could be held responsible in some measure.” Said her husband in an effort to console her. “You can understand how tough our times are and how difficult it is to find jobs. Even for these jobs in the unorganized sector there is brutal competition. And the veterans in the job vehemently resist new entrants like for example in the case of the maids you’ve recently heard that the old maids do not allow new people get jobs here. Very personally speaking I must applaud the girl for her determination and vision to get jobs. She is sharp and can be called one of the new-age go-getters. We’ll never know what compulsions have brought her here in this city leaving her family behind and why she could not carry on with her studies if at all she was admitted into schools. But mind you, it’s not sure that she’ll stick to the jobs she achieved for long; because she’ll definitely look for better opportunities.”

Namrata sat in silence for a long time. Then she asked, “But then how on earth are we going to solve our problems?”

“Let’s hope we settle down in one place soon instead of moving around all over the country!”

“And we compromise with our work and the opportunities?”

“That’s the problem! It applies to all the people in similar or worse positions.”